Nicholas Negroponte - Agenda Setter 2006

Picked not for his role at MIT Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte was chosen for One Laptop Per Child, his vision of bringing a $100 $140 dollar open source, mesh network laptops to schoolchildren in developing countries.

Love it or loathe it, the project is causing some big waves in the IT industry - trumpeting affordable computing, potentially spreading open source into markets Microsoft would love to dominate and posing questions regarding just how important tech is in education.

One panelist summed it up: "Whether or not Nicholas succeeds or fails, he's having a dramatic effect on the industry by sheer presence."